These Ornette Coleman albums, all recorded for Atlantic, are classic free jazz albums & rightfully so. And most of the album titles speak for themselves too, come to think of it.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Friday, January 16, 2009
My own lil' mixtape #1
If I ever had the opportunity to create my own little mixtape for the first time, here are the tracks which would find their way onto it:
Band Of Horses, "The First Song," Everything All The Time
Bon Iver, "Blindsided," For Emma, Forever Ago
The Sea and Cake, "Weekend," Car Alarm
The Sea and Cake, "Window Sills," see above
John Mayer, "No Such Thing," Room for Squares
Windsor for the Derby, "Spirit Fade," How We Lost
New Order, "Weirdo," Brotherhood
Outkast, "Prototype," Speakerboxxx/The Love Below
Caural, "Sending You Colors," Mirrors For Eyes
Stereolab, "Valley Hi!," Chemical Chords
M.I.A., "Hussel," Kala
M.I.A., "Paper Planes," see above
Band Of Horses, "The First Song," Everything All The Time
Bon Iver, "Blindsided," For Emma, Forever Ago
The Sea and Cake, "Weekend," Car Alarm
The Sea and Cake, "Window Sills," see above
John Mayer, "No Such Thing," Room for Squares
Windsor for the Derby, "Spirit Fade," How We Lost
New Order, "Weirdo," Brotherhood
Outkast, "Prototype," Speakerboxxx/The Love Below
Caural, "Sending You Colors," Mirrors For Eyes
Stereolab, "Valley Hi!," Chemical Chords
M.I.A., "Hussel," Kala
M.I.A., "Paper Planes," see above
finally free!!
The album that defined an entire stylistic subgenre & for that matter the whole genre itself.
The album which drew a line in the sand when it was first released, & still creates a lot of controversy between musicians, fanbases and critics to this day.
The album in question: Ornette Coleman's 1960 effort, the classic Free Jazz.
The album titles for Ornette were self-explanatory: The Shape of Jazz To Come, Change of the Century & This Is Our Music - all awesome releases in their own right. But Free Jazz, the predecessor of John Coltrane's Ascension, needed no explanation whatsoever: atonal, non-chordal music which is still raw, cutting & sharp as can be almost five decades later. Oh, & it's not without its share of controversy, its share of awe & amazement.
With Free Jazz Ornette only added more fuel to his critics' fire, knowing full well he was an infamous figure blazing new trails in the world of jazz. "What that man doing?" "Play that music right, for crying out loud!!" With two quartets playing the same music at variance with one another, it was so easy to see why his critics only wanted to add more insult to injury when it came to comprehending the man's intents with his music (& why he got panned so ruthlessly).
Yet this is the music what Messr. Coleman wanted to perform & this masterpiece is the final result.
He already took lambastings by folks who thought his full-ensemble way of approaching melody was unconventional, uncharacteristic, untraditional. Fair enough. But Coleman didn't want to be holed up in a box full of conventions & norms (i.e. normal chords & chordal voicings) in the first place; hence the pianoless quartet which made the aforementioned albums, Free Jazz included, such challenging music to get into yet such breaths of fresh air worth taking in.
(Without a piano - the trumpeter Don Cherry filling in that void; for Free Jazz, Freddie Hubbard was added into the musical equation - the music was liberating in more ways than one: no fixed rhythms, no tonal centers to cramp the perfomers' style. In short, it was just free, abstract playing.)
Free Jazz was the apotheosis of a whole subgenre in jazz, bar none. Without it, Ascension would never have gotten off the ground, or for that matter, any of Coltrane's late-period work. Without it, we wouldn't have had Eric Dolphy, Albert Ayler or Pharoah Sanders. Without Free Jazz, a whole genre wouldn't have gone in new directions, continued to push its limits & boundaries, continued to challenge & motivate.
With this album we're hearing the sound of the blues, raw emotion laid bare on tape, a cry unlike any other we heard before in our lives. It's all about emotion, not a bunch of musicians getting all intellectual & mathematical with their instruments. We hear lots of melodies, though not the ones we might expect to hear. Free Jazz is a jamming fest in the spirit of Mardi Gras, Dixieland gone atonal, an improvisational work of art which has stood the test of time, an enduring recording which doesn't deserve any unjust criticisms whatsoever.
Free Jazz is definitely not like any jazz recording you've heard in your life. This is out & out challenging music which is going to require far more than one listen alone to wholeheartedly appreciate.
The album which drew a line in the sand when it was first released, & still creates a lot of controversy between musicians, fanbases and critics to this day.
The album in question: Ornette Coleman's 1960 effort, the classic Free Jazz.
The album titles for Ornette were self-explanatory: The Shape of Jazz To Come, Change of the Century & This Is Our Music - all awesome releases in their own right. But Free Jazz, the predecessor of John Coltrane's Ascension, needed no explanation whatsoever: atonal, non-chordal music which is still raw, cutting & sharp as can be almost five decades later. Oh, & it's not without its share of controversy, its share of awe & amazement.
With Free Jazz Ornette only added more fuel to his critics' fire, knowing full well he was an infamous figure blazing new trails in the world of jazz. "What that man doing?" "Play that music right, for crying out loud!!" With two quartets playing the same music at variance with one another, it was so easy to see why his critics only wanted to add more insult to injury when it came to comprehending the man's intents with his music (& why he got panned so ruthlessly).
Yet this is the music what Messr. Coleman wanted to perform & this masterpiece is the final result.
He already took lambastings by folks who thought his full-ensemble way of approaching melody was unconventional, uncharacteristic, untraditional. Fair enough. But Coleman didn't want to be holed up in a box full of conventions & norms (i.e. normal chords & chordal voicings) in the first place; hence the pianoless quartet which made the aforementioned albums, Free Jazz included, such challenging music to get into yet such breaths of fresh air worth taking in.
(Without a piano - the trumpeter Don Cherry filling in that void; for Free Jazz, Freddie Hubbard was added into the musical equation - the music was liberating in more ways than one: no fixed rhythms, no tonal centers to cramp the perfomers' style. In short, it was just free, abstract playing.)
Free Jazz was the apotheosis of a whole subgenre in jazz, bar none. Without it, Ascension would never have gotten off the ground, or for that matter, any of Coltrane's late-period work. Without it, we wouldn't have had Eric Dolphy, Albert Ayler or Pharoah Sanders. Without Free Jazz, a whole genre wouldn't have gone in new directions, continued to push its limits & boundaries, continued to challenge & motivate.
With this album we're hearing the sound of the blues, raw emotion laid bare on tape, a cry unlike any other we heard before in our lives. It's all about emotion, not a bunch of musicians getting all intellectual & mathematical with their instruments. We hear lots of melodies, though not the ones we might expect to hear. Free Jazz is a jamming fest in the spirit of Mardi Gras, Dixieland gone atonal, an improvisational work of art which has stood the test of time, an enduring recording which doesn't deserve any unjust criticisms whatsoever.
Free Jazz is definitely not like any jazz recording you've heard in your life. This is out & out challenging music which is going to require far more than one listen alone to wholeheartedly appreciate.
Monday, January 12, 2009
crescent: in a few words
For John Coltrane, 1964 wasn't exactly a prolific year by any means. He & the quartet recorded only two albums that whole year, one of them being of course the masterpiece A Love Supreme. The other effort, Crescent, might have been overlooked, overshadowed by its little brother; it didn't receive the same amount of accolades as A Love Supreme. But still, Crescent is an equally impressive classic in its own right, revealing an understated beauty & glory which Coltrane had a penchant for creating.
The title track is one of the finest compositions Trane ever committed to tape, a harbinger of things to come with his late-period efforts; by the same token, this is a vehicle for Trane to improvise his heart out. (He would stretch this composition out beyond the unknown on the 4-CD set Live In Japan.) "Wise One" continues the streak of consistency, revealing the man at his finest: playing with full-on emotion, still longing, still seeking, still hoping for eventual reconciliation. "Bessie's Blues" is self-explanatory: over three minutes of straight-up, no-nonsense playing & McCoy Tyner playing a solo which is economical as much as it is sparkling. "Lonnie's Lament" is a showcase for another brilliant piano solo by Tyner & an unaccompanied bass solo by Jimmy Garrison. Then we've got the final composition which needs no further explanation, "The Drum Thing." This is Elvin Jones' time to shine & lay down an explosive exposition on his drumkit; this solo reveals why Jones was one of the best in jazz drumming as well as one of the most intense in his field.
With Crescent, we can see the seeds that would be sown for A Love Supreme: Trane was not only opening his heart to us spiritually but also lyrically. And as the previous paragraph amply illustrates, the contributions of his bandmates cannot be overlooked or underestimated; this is what made the Classic John Coltrane Quartet such a tight unit for a few years running.
A Love Supreme might have gotten all the glory but Crescent has its rightful place of honor in the Coltrane discography: With this effort, the man would lay the groundwork for his late period music in a more, readily accessible form.
The title track is one of the finest compositions Trane ever committed to tape, a harbinger of things to come with his late-period efforts; by the same token, this is a vehicle for Trane to improvise his heart out. (He would stretch this composition out beyond the unknown on the 4-CD set Live In Japan.) "Wise One" continues the streak of consistency, revealing the man at his finest: playing with full-on emotion, still longing, still seeking, still hoping for eventual reconciliation. "Bessie's Blues" is self-explanatory: over three minutes of straight-up, no-nonsense playing & McCoy Tyner playing a solo which is economical as much as it is sparkling. "Lonnie's Lament" is a showcase for another brilliant piano solo by Tyner & an unaccompanied bass solo by Jimmy Garrison. Then we've got the final composition which needs no further explanation, "The Drum Thing." This is Elvin Jones' time to shine & lay down an explosive exposition on his drumkit; this solo reveals why Jones was one of the best in jazz drumming as well as one of the most intense in his field.
With Crescent, we can see the seeds that would be sown for A Love Supreme: Trane was not only opening his heart to us spiritually but also lyrically. And as the previous paragraph amply illustrates, the contributions of his bandmates cannot be overlooked or underestimated; this is what made the Classic John Coltrane Quartet such a tight unit for a few years running.
A Love Supreme might have gotten all the glory but Crescent has its rightful place of honor in the Coltrane discography: With this effort, the man would lay the groundwork for his late period music in a more, readily accessible form.
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
tune in & get turned up: Ali Farka Toure
The heart of Africa is also the rightful birthplace of the blues; there's something distinctly African about the blues which some folks tend to overlook. I mean, the blues didn't start at the turn of the century in the United States: it truly began hundreds of years ago, right here in Africa.It didn't start with three chords and the simple truth. To be honest, it began by word of mouth. Of course, this also involved re-articulation, re-interpretation, putting one's own stamp of approval on folk tales, stories, songs, chants, etc. In who knows how many places, especially in the west African nation of Mali, that's exactly how the musical traditions of that region were (& still are) based.
The late Ali Farka Toure (1939-2006) serves as proof that the blues indeed did come from Africa. Dubbed as the "African John Lee Hooker" or "King of the African Blues," Toure took traditional Malian music & the American blues form & combined them to create something unique: music which is wholeheartedly African through & through. Toure brought us music which is truly hypnotic & mesmerizing, music which is just plain beautiful, & moreover, music which is genuine, authentic, pure Mali all the way.
Ali sang in several African languages which were spoken in his region - e.g. Songhai, Peul, Bambara, used traditional rhythms to get us hooked into his songs...definitely one of Africa's best known musicians as well as one of world music's best known performers.
His whole discography, to put it in one word alone, is awesome. Just to name a few must-haves:
The Source
Talking Timbuktu (with Ry Cooder)
Niafunke
Savane
Oh, & don't overlook Radio Mali and Red & Green.
a strange kind of brew
When Miles Davis' double LP Bitches Brew first found its way to the record stores in 1970, it not only would transcend every musical boundary line you could name off the top of your head. It also would influence musicians from all walks of life & musical genres in the process. Having said that, Bitches Brew would send the fusion movement full steam ahead with many of this recording's participants striking out on their own with new groups (Weather Report, Return to Forever & Mahavishnu Orchestra just to name three key players in the fusion genre).
True, Bitches Brew sold like hot cakes to the general public, it went gold, got a lot of rock music enthusiasts turned on...This album would go on to become Miles' best-selling record ever. Soon he would perform at rock venues such as both Fillmores as well as the Isle of Wight. Of course, the Prince of Darkness raised many a eyebrow as he was accustomed to doing at this juncture in his career: Purists were cringing at the new directions which the man was taking his music but he couldn't care less; he was never one inclined to perform the same old, same old material which his fans were expecting him to play night after night.
With Bitches Brew Miles Davis also made it adamantly clear to us where he drew the line when it came to the music he wanted to play, the directions he wanted to take it...The end result is some of the most amazing stuff ever recorded, by the way.
Picking up where his groundbreaking predecessor In A Silent Way left off, the studio became a musical instrument in itself, in its own special way. This time around, the application of the studio as musical instrumentation became even more pronounced, more apparent than ever, more obvious from the get-go. Two cases in point: "Pharoah's Dance" & the title track. Although it sounded like a cast of musicians jamming their tails off, large sections of this album, particularly the aforementioned compositions, relied on studio technology to create something which wasn't necessarily representative of the music which actually was committed to tape. By way of tape loops, delays, echo effects, reverb & extensive tape editing, Bitches Brew became a hallmark masterpiece of musical innovation, especially in terms of how the technology of that time period was used to create such a controversial & yet influential work of art.
Almost 40 years later, this music has aged quite nicely & found ways to endure. From the rollicking "Spanish Key," the hypnotic loopfests of "Pharoah's Dance" & the title track, right down to the ambient closer "Sanctuary," Miles & company were honestly churning out a pretty unique brew of sounds & colors previously unknown to the jazz community. With this effort, Miles changed the course of not only jazz but all of popular music; many musicians who were influenced by this album could do no wrong in putting this recording among one of their top 10 favorites.
Yes, it's that mysterious & powerful, even now.
True, Bitches Brew sold like hot cakes to the general public, it went gold, got a lot of rock music enthusiasts turned on...This album would go on to become Miles' best-selling record ever. Soon he would perform at rock venues such as both Fillmores as well as the Isle of Wight. Of course, the Prince of Darkness raised many a eyebrow as he was accustomed to doing at this juncture in his career: Purists were cringing at the new directions which the man was taking his music but he couldn't care less; he was never one inclined to perform the same old, same old material which his fans were expecting him to play night after night.
With Bitches Brew Miles Davis also made it adamantly clear to us where he drew the line when it came to the music he wanted to play, the directions he wanted to take it...The end result is some of the most amazing stuff ever recorded, by the way.
Picking up where his groundbreaking predecessor In A Silent Way left off, the studio became a musical instrument in itself, in its own special way. This time around, the application of the studio as musical instrumentation became even more pronounced, more apparent than ever, more obvious from the get-go. Two cases in point: "Pharoah's Dance" & the title track. Although it sounded like a cast of musicians jamming their tails off, large sections of this album, particularly the aforementioned compositions, relied on studio technology to create something which wasn't necessarily representative of the music which actually was committed to tape. By way of tape loops, delays, echo effects, reverb & extensive tape editing, Bitches Brew became a hallmark masterpiece of musical innovation, especially in terms of how the technology of that time period was used to create such a controversial & yet influential work of art.
Almost 40 years later, this music has aged quite nicely & found ways to endure. From the rollicking "Spanish Key," the hypnotic loopfests of "Pharoah's Dance" & the title track, right down to the ambient closer "Sanctuary," Miles & company were honestly churning out a pretty unique brew of sounds & colors previously unknown to the jazz community. With this effort, Miles changed the course of not only jazz but all of popular music; many musicians who were influenced by this album could do no wrong in putting this recording among one of their top 10 favorites.
Yes, it's that mysterious & powerful, even now.
Monday, January 5, 2009
field music, revisited
Sorority songs: this is esoteric music indeed, music which only a select few duders get the chance to hear in person. At the same time, it's beautiful music, the heartfelt sound of wonderful ladies singing in melody/in unison/call & response about who's the classiest, who's the best sorority out there.
But they're truly happening when duders get the chance to wholeheartedly hear them in person; they really strike some resounding chords indeed. Yet these songs don't get sung to any random guy walking down the street unless he's truly supporting AOII or DZ & is wearing their letters to confirm all this. They'll definitely find their way into the hearts of one & all for certain occasions. Otherwise, only a select few get an opportunity to hear "AWWW DZ..." or "I'm an A-O, A-O cutie Pi..." being sung at full volume.
I'm about to break out into song already, just thinking about hearing (& living) these songs again.
But they're truly happening when duders get the chance to wholeheartedly hear them in person; they really strike some resounding chords indeed. Yet these songs don't get sung to any random guy walking down the street unless he's truly supporting AOII or DZ & is wearing their letters to confirm all this. They'll definitely find their way into the hearts of one & all for certain occasions. Otherwise, only a select few get an opportunity to hear "AWWW DZ..." or "I'm an A-O, A-O cutie Pi..." being sung at full volume.
I'm about to break out into song already, just thinking about hearing (& living) these songs again.
tune in & get turned up: John Coltrane
This is my first post to begin the new year & what better way to kick things off than to bring up one of jazz's premier musicians of all time, the late John Coltrane. Not only am I a longtime fan of the man's music; I've also patiently embraced all the changes his music underwent right up to his passing in July 1967. If you love jazz or for that matter music in general, Coltrane should absolutely figure in as one of your primary favorites. He's one of my all-time greats, I'll tell you this much already.
Of course, some of his output is not for everybody (e.g. his late-period efforts): to some, he might sound like he's trying to exorcise demons out of his tenor (& occasionally) soprano saxophone. Some will remark that he's forceful, aggressive, downright intense as intense can be, playing his heart out & revealing to us a myriad of emotions you can't find elsewhere. And there are some who remark that his playing is a ton of sonic dreck. Each listener's personal opinions are justifiable at this point. But here's the bottom line: Coltrane always will be viewed as a lyrical & musical genius, as good as jazz musicians ever could get in their lifetimes. And the best way to truly appreciate his music is to approach each release of his with an open heart, an open mind & an open ears...in short, check your biases at the door.
And here's a brief list of must-haves to consider for beginning your John Coltrane collection:
Giant Steps
My Favorite Things (both of the above albums reveal Trane at the peak of his work with Atlantic)
A Love Supreme
Live at Birdland
Live at the Village Vanguard
Ballads (Trane was a master at ballads; this recording confirms just why he was)
Miles Davis - Kind of Blue (an awesome flipping classic)
At any rate, Coltrane recorded prolifically but these albums I just mentioned are perfect starting points to delve into his music. Wherever your ears go next in his discography is up to you to decide.
Of course, some of his output is not for everybody (e.g. his late-period efforts): to some, he might sound like he's trying to exorcise demons out of his tenor (& occasionally) soprano saxophone. Some will remark that he's forceful, aggressive, downright intense as intense can be, playing his heart out & revealing to us a myriad of emotions you can't find elsewhere. And there are some who remark that his playing is a ton of sonic dreck. Each listener's personal opinions are justifiable at this point. But here's the bottom line: Coltrane always will be viewed as a lyrical & musical genius, as good as jazz musicians ever could get in their lifetimes. And the best way to truly appreciate his music is to approach each release of his with an open heart, an open mind & an open ears...in short, check your biases at the door.
And here's a brief list of must-haves to consider for beginning your John Coltrane collection:
Giant Steps
My Favorite Things (both of the above albums reveal Trane at the peak of his work with Atlantic)
A Love Supreme
Live at Birdland
Live at the Village Vanguard
Ballads (Trane was a master at ballads; this recording confirms just why he was)
Miles Davis - Kind of Blue (an awesome flipping classic)
At any rate, Coltrane recorded prolifically but these albums I just mentioned are perfect starting points to delve into his music. Wherever your ears go next in his discography is up to you to decide.
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